The Postrevolution Setting

FOUR years of revolution with a common objective and the attendant

spread of a national language brought to Indonesians a great increase m
political consciousness and national awareness. Particularly marked among
urban elements, this was often discernible at the village level as well, the
turmoil of Japanese occupation and revolution having clone much to break
down the introverted parochialism previously characteristic of most
Indonesian villages. The rapid spread of a national educational system, down
to and including the village, significant even during the revolution but
tremendous in scale (if not always in qwditv) thereafter, considerably
reinforced this tendency.

Heightened Expectations
Another important psychological residue of the revolution was the
heightened expectations which the achievement of independence induced.
They characterized in particular the outlook of educated and semieducated
elements, especially those who had played the most active roles in the
revolution, but were also to be found in varying degrees among a large part of
urban and plantation labor and in some areas among the peasantry. Economic
benefits as well as social and political status formerly seen as having been
preserves of the Dutch were now regarded as the legitimate right of
Indonesians. This feeling was understandably strongest among those who had
won new self-confidence during the revolution and Japanese occupation by
demonstrating ability to handle a wide range of positions previously regarded
its outside the scope of their competence. But the idea was widespread that
careers should be open to talent and that positions should be based upon
ability and upon achievement demonstrated during the revolution. Education
was seen as the postrevolutionary generation's principal channel of
advancement, an avenue of social mobility extending down to the village.
Although within a few years party connection increasingly became a criterion
for career advancement, usually it did not supersede education in importance.
This emphasis upon education as a basis for advancement, though
undoubtedly salutary in general, frequently penalized the middle generation—
the young men and women in their twenties and early thirties who had
provided so much of the vanguard of the revolution, often shouldering aside
their more timorous colonial-conditioned elders and at decisive moments
assuming the leadership and taking the decisive actions without which the
revolution would have failed. Having in so many cases dropped out of school
or college during the Japanese occupation and/or shelving their schooling to
throw all their energies into the four-year revolutionary struggle, they were in
educational terms a "lost generation." Beginning in 1950 some were able to
return to their studies, but most had been out for so long, often having a wife
and children to support, that this was quite impossible. Thus they were in an
awkward position, for although their revolutionary record and practical
experience gave them a claim to the positions of responsibility they had
assumed or aspired to, on educational grounds they were in a weak position to
compete. And now many of the older- generation revolutionary nationalists
who had been happy to give them their head during the revolution felt that the
time had come to reassert a position of superiority based on education as well
as age and, since a reasonable degree of security was now attached to the
upper governmental and political positions, ensure that these should rest
largely in their own hands.'
' When those older nationalists who could point to a good revolutionary record took this
position of emphasizing age, education, and length of bureaucratic service ( often stretching
many years back into the Japanese and Dutch colonial periods) as being criteria for
governmental or party rank of equal or greater importance than revolutionary record, they
were able to push aside and supersede many of those young, imaginative, and dynamic
leaders who had won their spurs during the revolution at the cost of disrupting their schooling
and of falling far behind in educational qualifications. But in addition, this opened the way for
hundreds of
Although many of the younger ex-revolutionaries did not actually lose
their government or party posts, often they were smothered by new positions
opened up above and beside them and filled by their elders.2 Those so by-
passed became understandably bitter and discouraged, their expectations
frustrated. Thereby their country was deprived of much of the imaginative
thinking and willingness to take resolute action which had made this group's
service so valuable during the revolution. In failing to provide its young
revolutionary vanguard with opportunities for social service commensurate
with the positions it filled during the revolution, the leaders of
postrevolutionary Indonesia dissipated one of their country's most valuable
assets, contributing to its problems as well as weakening its political viability.

Economic Conditions
Postrevolutionary expectations operated in an unpronnsing economic
milieu. For after the revolution Indonesia was immensely poorer in developed
economic resources than during the prewar colonial period —the wartime
bombing raids, long and bitter fighting in the revolution, and frequent recourse
to scorched-earth policies, both preceding the Japanese occupation and during
the revolution. had resulted in the devastation of wide areas. The extent of
damage or total destruction to transportation and communication facilities, oil
installations, plantation equipment, sugar centrals, and the few industrial
enterprises which the prewar economy had supported was tremendous; their
restoration would require great effort, large financial outlay, and a substantial
period of time. With respect to the government's financial substance, it should be
recalled that as a consequence of the Round Table Agreement Indonesia had
been saddled with a heavy indebtedness to the Netherlands, one which from the
outset was a significant draM upon its economy. Moreover, because of the
destruction of some of the few prewar industrial and processing enterprises,
Indonesia's postwar economy was even more lopsided, even more preponderantly
dependent upon the export of a few generally unprocessed raw materials (rubber,
tin, oil, and copra) than before the war. And, as then, the prices of
fair-weather nationalists, timorous Republicans as Nvell as former Federalists, to argue
that their age, education, and bureaucratic experience outweighed their lack of
revolutionary record and entitled them to positions which many ex- revolutionaries held or
felt a right to.
In the army this situation did not arise; for among its officers there was only a meager
handful of the older generation, and only a few of them could point to experience that
extended back before the revolution and Japanse occupation.

most of these exports on the world market fluctuated widely, making it

difficult for the government to undertake long-term economic planning. With the
government dependent primarily upon export and import taxes for its revenue,
this problem was to become especially crucial.
Although the revolution and the Japanese occupation had seriously eroded the
economic base of the country, its population had increased considerably, at least 15
per cent over the prewar figure, with most of this increase in already-
overcrowded Java. During the revolution the Javanese peasantry did temporarily
improve its position by repudiating its indebtedness to Chinese moneylenders, but
the ratio between peasants and the available supply of arable land had become
more unbalanced. Concentration of land ownership and absentee landlordism
remained slight, but the average peasant's plot on Java had become smaller and
his level of living had probably dropped, with the substantial degree of economic
equality which persisted being maintained "through a division of the economic
pie into smaller and smaller pieces," a sort of "shared poverty." "
Most of Indonesia's economy above the village level remained
capitalistic in character and still preponderantly in the hands of non-
Indonesians, primarily Netherlanders and Chinese. Although the amount of
Western capital invested in postwar Indonesia remained large (Dutch
investments despite destruction suffered during the revolution still standing in the
neighborhood of a billion dollars), its political leverage was now infinitely less
than had been the case during the colonial period. Western economic enterprise
now had to deal with a government whose leaders were nearly all strongly
socialist, many of them unsympathetic to any increase in the role of foreign
capital and most of them dedicated to the idea of its eventual displacement by
socialization or transfer to the hands of Indonesian capitalists. In addition
Western and Chinese business were now confronted by large and militant trade
unions, something the colonial government had never countenanced. Formation
of these labor unions had been encouraged by the revolutionary government, and
the postrevolutionary government remained sympathetically inclined toward them,
framing legislation advantageous to their growth and to their bargaining position
vis-à-vis capital. Membership in these unions soon reached be-
' Clifford Ceertz, "Religious Belief and Economic Behaviour in a Javanese Town:
Some Preliminary Considerations," Economic and Cultural Change, IV, no. 2 ( Jan. 1956),
141.
tween 1.5 and 2 million, and it was precisely in the plantations, oil fields,
and industrial enterprises where Western capital was most active that they
enrolled most of their members. Increasingly the trade unions took on a political
Orientation, the majority of them becoming adjuncts of political parties, in
particular the Indonesian Communist Party.
Just as during the colonial period, Indonesia's 2.5 to 3 million Chinese
continued to dominate the lower and middle levels of the capitalist sector of the
economy. As a consequence of the revolution they had to a large extent lost their
previously strong position as dispensers of agrarian credit, most of them leaving
the countryside for the cities and thereby swelling the proportion of Chinese
domiciled there; but they were quick to move into those sectors of economic
enterprise from which European capital was withdrawing. As government policy
sought to promote the economic interests of Indonesians, primarily through
granting highly preferential treatment in distributing import li censes, some
traditional Indonesian trading elements, largely in Sumatra and Borneo, were
able to take direct advantage of these opportunities. In many areas, however,
particularly in Java, these measures indirectly benefited Chinese more than they
helped Indonesians. Most Indonesians lacked the requisite entrepreneurial
experience and subleased their privileges to Chinese so endowed with this
quality as to make substantial profit even though required to give the Indonesian
license holder a sizable cut. An undoubted affinity of economic interests developed
between such Indonesian "fronts" and their Chinese associates, but this was to
result in no discernible social integration. The Chinese community continued to
stand apart from the Indonesian, the distance between them having if anything
been increased during the course of the revolution when most Chinese took what
they termed a "neutral" position, one hardly likely to elicit sympathy from the
hard- pressed Indonesians. Even that majority of the Chinese population willing
to accept Indonesian citizenship was not regarded as Indonesian by most ethnic
Indonesians and found itself discriminated against by governmental economic
policy.' Thus the role of Indonesians in the capitalist sector of their country's
economy remained almost as small after the revolution as before, the slight
increase of their importance between 1950 and 1958 stemming primarily from
preferential governmental policies.
See Donald E. Willmott, The National Status of the Chinese in Indonesia (Cornell
Modern Indonesia Project, Interim Reports Series; Ithaca, N.Y., 1956).
 The Bureaucracy
A great and striking difference between postrevolutionary and colonial
Indonesian society was in the bureaucracy. Whereas before the revolution
Western-educated Indonesians had been given only very slight access to its
middle and upper ranks, these had now become their exclusive preserve. In the
bureaucracy heightened expectations could to a degree at least be rewarded ; for,
as traditionally, it was still regarded by Indonesians as a profession of great
prestige. The economic rewards were, however, disappointing, salaries (in terms
of purchasing power ) being much smaller than during the colonial period. This
resulted not only from the poverty of the postrevolutionary government and an
increasingly serious monetary inflation, but from inflation of the bureaucracy itself.
By the early 1950s the national civil service had become four times as great as
before the war, nearly 600,000 as against approximately 150,000.
The necessity of incorporating the Dutch-sponsored Federalist civil service
into that built up during the revolution in the Republic induced from the outset a
loss in morale among both elements. Those from the Republic felt that
revolutionary service and sacrifice should be rewarded; they were often
disillusioned in finding themselves placed under someone who had greater
experience or educational qualifications but who had served in one of the
Dutch-controlled states and whom, as a consequence, they frequently regarded
as opportunistic and lacking in patriotism. On the other hand former Federalists
working under a civil servant whose only training had been acquired under the
revolutionary Republic frequently felt aggrieved because the Republican lacked
their experience or education.
Unfortunately it proved virtually impossible to stiffen the administrative
backbone of the new state by utilizing experienced Dutch and Eurasian civil
service personnel. From the standpoint of cold logic the government's dismissal
of so many of the undoubtedly competent Dutch and Eurasian administrative
officers and technicians who had served the colonial government may seem
unreasonable. But the nature of Indonesian nationalism ran counter to such logic.
Distrust of the Dutch was increased as a result of an attempted coup against the new
Indonesian government ( the Westerling Affair) by demobilized officers and
men of the Dutch colonial army less than two months after the Netherlands had
formally relinquished sovereignty. As a consequence many actually loyal and
capable Dutch civil servants were regarded with suspicion and kept from
positions in which they could have been very useful. Moreover, Indonesia is
perhaps unique among the newly emancipated Asian nations in that its Eurasian
population, which had competently filled many of the upper-middle administrative
positions in the colonial bureaucracy, with few exceptions declared
unequivocally for the colonial power, during the revolution aligning themselves
solidly with the Dutch against the Republic. Thus, although many Eurasians
remained in Indonesia after the Netherlands' withdrawal, they were rarely
welcome in the higher administrative and technical positions, even though often
better trained than Indonesians.
The Indonesian bureaucracy was not a harmonious and unified group. The
postrevolutionary loss of morale was soon increased as the competition of
political parties resulted in its growing politicization, appointments frequently
being made more in terms of political patronage than merit. As they
maneuvered for control of parliament, and especially as they prepared for the
national elections, the parties often utilized their power to influence
appointments to the bureaucracy as a means of filling strategic positions in the
territorial administrations as well as in certain key ministries with men who
could be relied upon to advance party interests. Consequently, although the
buredueracv can be regarded as a force of some consequence in the Indonesian
political scene, its impact has nut been as great as might be expected on the
basis of the high proportion of the Western-educated Indonesian elite it has
incorporated. Where the influence of its members has been felt, it has
frequently been in terms of party advantage rather than calculated to promote
views or interests of the bureaucracy as a whole.
This, then, was the bureaucracy called upon to be the instrument of a
government covering the worlds geographically least integrated major state, a
bureaucracy charged not merely with routine administration, but also with
carrying out a wide range of social services far surpassing those previously
undertaken by the highly trained officials of the colonial government. It was a
bureaucracy notable primarily for its size, too large for the government to pay
its members adequately, lacking in efficient organization, and bereft of the
high morale and élan that had previously existed among that part of its
membership which had served the revolutionary government. Most crucial of
all, there were few possibilities for improving its quality, the overwhelming
majority of its members being woefully lacking in experience and only a very
small proportion equipped with even a secondary education. Thus
postrevolutionary Indonesia emerged without the governmental capital so vital
to the political viability of a new state—a well-trained civil service such as
India fell heir to or at least the well-trained nucleus for one such as Pakistan
inherited. Nor had the Netherlands' colonial legacy provided any substantial
pool of educated men which might have been drawn upon to compensate for
this lack. Indonesia began its postrevolutionary existence with what was
undoubtedly the weakest civil service by far of any contemporary major state.

The Army
With respect to its armed forces, too, Indonesia did not enjoy as sub-
stantial a colonial inheritance as India or Pakistan. Instead of an integrated
monolithic army with members having a common background of training and
led by highly trained professional officers with substantial careers behind
them, Indonesia's postrevolutionary army is highly heterogeneous and only a
handful of its officers has had prewar experience. It incorporates two broad
components—the semi- guerrilla revolutionary army and sizable elements of
the disbanded Dutch colonial army (KNIL). Not only are they poorly suited to
work harmoniously with one another, but even within the larger of them, the
revolutionary army, there are ideologically diverse elements, frequently with
different backgrounds of training.
According to the Round Table Agreement, troops of the Royal
Netherlands Army, numbering about 80,000, were to be withdrawn from
Indonesia as rapidly as possible, and the Netherlands Colonial Army ( KNIL )
—a predominantly Christian Indonesian and Eurasian force of some 65,000
men—was to be dissolved by July 26, 1950. Actually the demobilization of
the KNIL took considerably longer and was not completed until June 1951.
This was a delicate process, inasmuch as only a very small number of these
troops elected to settle in the Netherlands, most of them wishing to stay in
Indonesia. Indonesian leaders were understandably reluctant to incorporate
these former adversaries into the new Indonesian army. But it was believed
even more dangerous to return all of them to civilian life, thereby setting free
of military discipline a formidable group of professional fighting men whose
loyalty to the new government was at best dubious and many of whom would
he further antagonized if denied the opportunity to continue in their chosen
career. Consequently it was regarded as necessary to absorb approximately
half of this ex-colonial force into the new army. Very soon the government
experienced serious trouble from some of those demobilized elements not
incorporated into the new army; it was from this group that Captain "Turk"
Westerling recruited the soldiers for his abortive coup detat. Westerling, a
recently retired Dutch officer, already notorious because of his responsibility
for atrocities during 1946 in southern Celebes, on January 23, 1950, led a
force of recently demobilized Netherlands colonial troops into battle against a
small Indonesian army unit quartered in Bandung, drove them out, and briefly
occupied the city. Three days later his men infiltrated Jakarta for the purpose
of launching a coup against the government, but were discovered and ejected
by former Republican forces before they could act. Shortly thereafter
Westerling fled to Singapore in a Dutch military plane.
An equally grave question centered about the future of some 100,000 Republican
guerrilla soldiers in Java, Sumatra, Celebes, and Borneo who had not been part
of the regular forces of the revolutionary army. Clearly, unless they were
incorporated into the new army, provision had to be made for absorbing them into
civilian life—a task which was hard enough as a psychological problem, but
was particularly difficult because of the economic and administrative weakness of
the government.
 Even within the major component of the new Indonesian army, the regular
detachments of the revolutionary forces, there were many serious factors
impeding unity. Only the revolution itself, common battle against the colonial
enemy, had kept its diverse elements together during 1945-1949. But with this
integrating factor removed, their differences tended to he accentuated. Except
for a tiny handful who had received training as noncommissioned officers, and even
more rarely as commissioned officers, during the last years of the colonial regime,
its officers were divided into two major groups—those who had been trained by
the Japanese in the Peta and subsequently fought for the Republic in the
revolution and those who had not had any previous military training but received
all their experience during the course of the revolution itself. A large proportion of
this second group were men of some education, mostly former teachers or high
school students. A significant proportion of the Japanese-trained and indoctrinated
group tended to feel that the army should quite properly have a voice in politics,
often taking a sympathetic view of authoritarian political organization and
holding democratic government in low regard. A majority of those officers trained
exclusively during the revolution were inclined, however, in part because of
their educational background, to view politics as something that an army officer
should eschew and were at the same time proponents of democratic government.
Both of these major groups could be broken down further according to ideological
inclination, there being several political currents discernible.5
A further important division within the officer corps—one already discernible
(luring the last two years of the revolution—became extremely important during
the postrevolutionary period, its growth being stimulated by the dispatch of a
sizable minority of the younger and generally better-educated officers abroad for
advanced training, especially to the United States, Western Europe, and the
Philippines. Such experience often increased the generally existing propensity
among the better-educated officers to urge a reorganization and rationalization of the
army in order to make it smaller, more efficient, and technically better trained—
more like the professional armies of the West. Their point of view understandably
generated strong opposition among that large component of officers trained under
the Japanese—a group which possessed less education and fewer technical
qualifications and which consequently feared, with some justification, that
under such a program they would be regarded as the most expendable ele ment.
For their part they argued that what was needed was a large army, trained and
organized as during the revolution, with emphasis upon guerrilla tactics and
revolutionary spirit.
Probably more important than these differences were the divisions which
emerged in the army on the basis of regional indentification. The course of the
Indonesian revolution, with its long period of grueling guerrilla warfare, enforced
a pattern of military operations which made for a divided and regionally rooted
military establishment, one effective in fighting the Dutch but not well suited to
maintaining a unified military organization once independence had been achieved.
There was
One of the most important was strongly Islamic and receptive to the idea that the state
should be organized in at least general conformity with Islamic tenets. There was also a
considerable Marxist (inure often pseudo-Marxist) current which could be roughly
subdivided into democratic socialist and national Com munist sectors. There was an important
relatively moderate current, nominally or passively Islamic, but not inclined to press for an
Islamic basis to politics or government, and, though generally socialist, not militantly so.
Within the group of Japanese-trained officers there was a small but influential element,
particularly heavily indoctrinated by the Japanese, who were strongly attracted to the political
and social code of the Japanese officer caste, especially to the ideas of Toyama, leader of the
Black Dragon Society, and to the sort of thinking evidenced among the Japanese army's
Young Officers group. These were advocates of a highly authoritarian political order
wherein the army would be regarded as "the soul of the nation" and entitled to play a
central role.
a natural tendency for army personnel to be recruited in the regions where
they fought, and to conduct successful guerrilla warfare the revolutionary army had to
develop close and sympathetic rapport with the local populations. There resulted
an identification of local army units with the inhabitants of the regions in which
they operated and a tendency for soldiers and officers to regard themselves as
representatives of the local population, a conviction which did not die with the
attainment of independence. Thus in the postrevolutionary period a large part of
the troops stationed in the various regions (particularly in Sumatra) were those
which had fought there during the revolution and developed roots among the
population. These roots were strong and in many cases were maintained afterwards.
During the revolution, moreover, many officers had become accustomed to playing
roles which were in part political as well as military. It was not merely a matter of
regard- mg themselves as the vanguard of the revolution, often seeing themselves
in this respect as peers of the political leaders in Jogjakarta. In addition the nature
of the military struggle against the Dutch frequently required commanders to
exercise a wide range of political and administrative functions in the areas where
they operated. So accustomed did many of them become to playing these
extramilitary roles that following the revolution they were often reluctant to
relinquish them!'
It should be therefore apparent why from the outset postrevolutionary
Indonesia was beset by security problems of great magnitude, problems that were to
tax seriously its limited financial and administrative resources. For a country as
vast and geographically unintegrated as Indonesia the problem was made more
acute because of the lack of adequate air and naval forces (one destroyer and a
few corvettes ) and the absence of trained personnel to man larger forces. During
the first year of its existence the new government was, after great difficulties,
able to cope with and largely eliminate the problem posed by adven -
" Moreover, during the postrevolutionary period because of the promulgation from time
to time of a state of martial law ( - war and siege") in a number of districts where security
conditions have been poor, Jakarta has delegated to mili tary commanders extensive civil
powers. In some areas the range of administrative and economic problems which territorial
commanders have been obliged to shoulder has been so extensive and burdensome that they have
had insufficient time to devote to the military training of the units under them. Although
commanders of military districts have frequently complained of this and have sometimes
sought to avoid such responsibilities, among the officers under them there has often been a
reluctance to relinquish such civil powers once they have been assumed. (With the emergence
of acute political crisis in late February 1957 the whole of Indo nesia was placed under a state
of martial law, thereby endowing all the territorial commanders with extensive civil powers and
functions.)

turers and recalcitrants among demobilized (though sometimes still intact)

units of the Dutch colonial army. But the problem of rehabilitating some 100,000
ex-guerrillas, training them and finding them places in civilian life, was to prove
more difficult, and the close of 1957 found it still only partially solved. In the
mountains of western Java and the interior of southern Celebes militantly Islamic
ex-guerrillas dedicated, ostensibly at least, to the proposition of establishing a
theocratic Islamic state (Darul Islam ) have maintained themselves up to the
present ( though in western Java with a dwindling base and reduced strength),
directing a violent and destructive hit-and-run guerrilla warfare against the
government. The even more formidable problem of unifying, rationalizing, and
reducing the size of the new army has remained largely unsolved and has exerted,
directly or indirectly, a profound influence on the course of political events.

The Political Elite

Government and politics in postrevolutionary Indonesia have been dominated
by a handful of people, probably not many more than a thousand. Most of this
tiny political elite are in the upper ranks of the bureaucracy, in the cabinet, in the
leadership of the political parties (both in and outside parliament ), in the army, in
journalism, and in the universities. Although incorporating a number of
influential people whose education has been leavened by a considerable
Modernist or orthodox Islamic ingredient and in a few instances by heavy doses of
Japanese indoctrination (especially in the case of some army officers ), the
outstanding characteristic of nearly all members of this elite is Western
education, secondary school or above.' This similarity in educational background
and a common colonial and revolutionary conditioning have tended to promote
considerable homogeneity in their approach to socioeconomic problems, nearly all
of them espousing some variant of socialism. A very minor portion have been
attracted to communism, and a few, including a small but active number of army
officers, have inclined toward other types of totalitarianism. The preponderant
majority, however, have been in varying degrees proponents of democratic ideas.
Nevertheless during the period 1950-1958 increasing disunity developed, even
among those who had been united during the
See Soelaernan Soemardi, "Some Aspects of the Social Origin of Indonesian Political
Decision-Makers," Transactions of the Third World Congress of Sociology, 111 (1956), 338-348.
revolution. There were differences over whether and to what extent the state
should he organized along Islamic lines and whether or not the Communists
should be permitted a part in the government; and there were differences over
Soekarno's proper role in government and the extent of his authority in the army,
the urgency of the West Irian ( New Guinea ) issue and the right way of solving
it, the kind of decentralization best suited to Indonesia's interests, the proper way
to reorganize the army, the manner in which national elections should be carried out,
and the necessity for and proper nature of a drive against corruption. 13tit purely
personal differences were frequently of greater importance. Given the tremendous
possibilities in postrevolutionary society for rapid upward advance, the very
minuteness of this elite may well have been detrimental to its inner harmony. With
the floodgates of social mobility opened, it was perhaps natural that the sudden
availability of many new and heretofore unobtainable positions should generate a
competitive scramble, one rendered particularly sharp because the competitors
knew one another (and one another's limitations and virtues) so well. The situation
might not have been characterized by such bitterness had the competition been
more impersonal—as could presumably have been the case if the elite had been
larger, less intermarried, and less knowledgeable of one another's character. The
numerous political parties, moreover, based as much ( or more) on personalities as
on issues and platforms, tended to aggravate the situation, the multiparty system
working frequently against solidarity and providing channels for promoting intra-
elite conflict.
Since the revolution Indonesia's political elite has generally exercised its
leadership without the necessity of any great amount of consulta tion with the
mass of the population. ( The major exceptions have been the national elections of
1955-1956, the provincial elections of 1957, and apparently the regional anti-
Jakarta political movements of 19571958. ) The village level of society presents a
more democratic character than before the revolution, and the village leaders—most
of them now elected—must often come to terms with a more politically conscious
village populace and new and sometimes aggressive unofficial local leaders.
Nevertheless, by and large the villagers—leaders and led— still look to
governmental levels above them for initiative in a number of traditional as well
as new spheres of activity. They are used to and still expect the exercise of
authority from above, and in general the relationship between the national or
regional capital and the village re mains strongly authoritarian in character, with
little or no feeling on the part of its inhabitants that the government in Jakarta or
the regional capital is "their" government or in any wav their agent.
There are occasionally, however, some relatively important decisions
taken by the elite where an area of consensus broader than its own
membership is required and where the area is expanded to incorporate what
might be termed the literate subelite. This sector of the population roughly
corresponds with the more politically conscious elements among Indonesia's
two to three million newspaper readers, generally individuals possessing an
education which has stopped at or gone no more than a couple of years beyond
the primary level. The Indonesian press has for the most part been vigorous,
forthright, and often politically sophisticated; consequently where the decision
on a political issue needs to be based in a relatively broad consensus, it has
been effective in arousing the political concern of the literate subelite.
Moreover, several of the political parties are able to mobilize significant
sectors of public Opinion on such occasions through rallies and oral agitation
as well as through their newspapers.
On those very rare occasions when governmental decisions have requii.ed
an even broader base ( there probably, have been less than a half dozen since
1950), this subelite—working primarily, though not exclusively, within the
political parties and the labor and peasant organizations or through such
components of the bureacracy as the Ministries of Information, Interior, or
Religion—has served as the link between the elite and the masses. The literate
subelite can as yet only to a limited extent be characterized as mediator
between the two, since the relationship is still largely one-sided, that is, from
the top down. But its mediating role is increasing, and as the masses become
more politically conscious this function of the subelite, and thus its political
power, will expand. In the last two years it has been at the provincial level—
between provincial elite and mass—that its importance appears to have grown
most rapidly.
Some Traditional Factors Affecting Decision Making
Despite the revolution, the hierarchical cast of government inherited from the
colonial and precolonial periods has remained strong. Persistence of traditional
attitudes toward authority has discouraged the growth of self-reliance among
subordinate officials, the majority of whom feel uneasy about exercising
initiative and continue to look upward in the hierarchy for instruction concerning
many matters which they should be capable of resolving themselves. With few
exceptions initiative is still expected to come from the top, and it is usually deemed
improper for a subordinate to introduce something new. Many even of those
qualified individuals in the highest levels of government continue to show the
imprint of a colonial experience wherein they were conditioned to eschew
important decisions and leave them to paternalistic Dutch officials, a conditioning
which today frequently results in deferring or avoiding decisions of pressing
importance. Where there is no way of evading a decision, they frequently strive to
escape full responsibility by sharing it with others, particularly with those
relatively few colleagues who are not averse to shouldering responsibility. The
resultant number of meetings concerned with relatively trivial problems is
staggering. These cut deeply into the time and energy of the few key men in the
government, whose preoccupation with minor matters has become a major factor
in hindering the formation of governmental policy as well in delaying
administrative decisions.
The problem is exacerbated because of the limited number of Indonesians who
recei,7ed administrative training or higher education under the Dutch, with most of
those who did now being absorbed into the very top levels of the bureaucracy
and into the ministries. In other words nearly all of the tiny pools of experts arc
lodged at the very top of the governmental decision-making pyramid. Because of
both traditional factors and the limited supply of expertise the system forces a
host of routine as well as important decisions—political, administrative, and
technical—to the top levels of the hierarchy. Thus many more de cisions are passed
to time top in Indonesia than is true in probably any other major nontotalitarian
country.
A traditionally rooted element in the decision-making process which continues to
have importance is the emphasis upon social solidarity and harmony—a cultural
value particularly strong among the Javanese which begets the widely shared
conviction that openly stated conflict is to be avoided as disruptive. It is this
precolonial legacy which underlies and helps explain the distinctively Indonesian
approach to democracy, the coming to agreement through extensive discussion
aimed at yielding a synthesis of views, an often implicit consensus known as
inufakat. Such generally sensed agreement is reached not through majority vote,
but in a way somewhat reminiscent of the Quaker "sense of the meeting." This is
a consensus which is felt rather than physically measured. It eschews voting, for
voting produces an opposition minority as well as the majority. Hence a number
of influ ential Indonesian political leaders are averse to decision-making pro-
cedures that involve voting. They are convinced that these stimulate disharmony
and make differences explicit, crystallizing points of view to an extent where
they are too hard to be mellowed or melted down into a common synthesis
through further discussion.
Mufakat procedure has worked particularly well at the village level, where
the sphere of decision making is well charted and largely concerned with matters
of traditional concern, most of them easily relatable to past precedent. But while
nuifakat is possible on a small scale (we have noted that this was one reason for the
success of the Working Committee in the revolutionary government ), it is not
easily adapted to decision making by large bodies of individuals with
considerably different backgrounds such as have made up Indonesian
parliaments both before and after the elections of 1955. Parliamentary decisions are
reached on the basis of a simple majority vote and have come to be regarded by
many Indonesians as contributing to and reinforcing national differences of
opinion.
Despite undoubted virtues, the inufakat system does slow the process of
decision making. In the cabinet the usual practice has apparently been for
decisions of major importance—especially where there is reason to believe
significant differences of opinion exist—to be made on this basis rather than by
simple voting ( the method followed in reaching most minor and middle-range
decisions ). This also appears to be the general pattern in a number of the top-
level bureaucratic councils. With such a paucity of people qualified to take
decisions in behalf of the government, the few key men must attend an unending
number of deliberative sessions to arrive at decisions generally made by a single
responsible individual in most governmental systems; in addition those sessions
which involve major decisions are often very long, sometimes a whole series of
meetings over a considerable span of time being required to arrive at the
consensus necessary before action can he taken. For in order to maintain harmony
in the cabinet and within ministerial councils and other bodies, it is frequently
necessary to discuss and debate a question for a long time if a common
denominator sufficiently precise for laying the basis of a new policy is to be
discovered. Sometimes the inability to attain mufakat will result in the shelving
of a major issue, since it is regarded as more important to maintain harmony —even
'diough the problem remains—than to arrive at a decision based upon a simple
majority and a consequent open disruption of solidarity.